Friday, December 27, 2013

This tool is the one I have been working on for the last year (off and on). It's purpose is to address an issue I had with the Red Ash System and how it is current configured. This issue was a limitation of making truly powerful creatures, like demons or dragons.

The current rule is to use a flat value of 6000 for a playable species and 5000 for any non-playable species. These points were then used to buy traits, better stats, and so on. Any points left over would be your starting population to fill the world, that is yet to be created. I have fewer points for non-playable species simply because I did not think there would be a need to manage a population of monsters, demons, or even bears. But trying to make a dragon in Red Ash just kept coming up short of the grandeur I felt these creatures truly deserve.

A simple solution to this issue would be to toss more points at the problem. I tried 10k points, 20k points and while this works I felt it was...well a hack. I then thought I could make additional negative traits to "excuse" the added points being used, again to hack-ish.

The approach I decided on was to use a species life span and the various stages one goes through as a model to generate a base for these points. This allows Red Ash to generate a very wide amount of starting points and will require all in game creatures to have their age monitored and life stage advanced.

The stages are broken down into: Newborn, Infancy, Toddler, Child, Adolescent, Adult, mature and Elderly. Each stage has a significance in the game mechanics and all life will fall into these groups.

Newborn - The stage where the body is fully formed. But it is weak and helpless. The senses are not very acute and comprehension is limited.

Infancy - Shows a marked increase in the senses. The body becomes stronger and the individual can hold themselves up. basic locomotion can start here.

Toddler - Physical strength continues to improve and the individual can get around on there own. Agility and Coordination still need improvement. An understanding of basic communication starts (tiers 1-2 only). Mundane traits activate, like poison. I will need to add these values to the traits.

Child - Physical able to get around on there own with greatly improved strength, agility, coordination and senses. Communication skills are solid. Skills training can begin.

Adolescent - Reproduction activates but at a higher risk percentage to parent and offspring. Powered or other special traits activate. More advanced skills are open (tier 3-4)

Adult - Full maturity is reached, no penalties for reproduction. all skill tiers are open.

Elderly - No longer able to reproduce. Physical abilities continue to reduce. Mental abilities begin to reduce. At the end of this stage an individual will roll a 10% chance to die from natural causes. This percentage increases by an additional 5% per year that they continue to live.

In game terms this creates so very interesting questions that can be presented to the strategy player, it can also limit the rpg player in race selection when making a new character. but more on all this later.